Artist as Explorer: Directing research projects in Asia, Central Asia and South America, Les is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain; and Fellow of the Explorers Club, New York. He was US Department of State sponsored Field Research Fellow at the American Center for Mongolian Studies Ulaanbaatar; Fellow at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation at The University of the Arts London and US Department of State Zero1 Arts Incubator Artist. He has presented on intercultural arts collaboration at the Cambridge University Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and completed his Post-Doctorate on ritual and contemporary art at Escola de Comunicações e Artes, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
In Mongolia he led an expedition to Tsaatan nomadic reindeer herding communities at the Mongolian Border Region with Siberia, featured in Going Beyond: Artist as Adventurer, Cambridge Scholars, UK (2018).
2014 Expedition to the Mongolian Restricted Border Region with Siberia.
Exploration and Research
Arctic Circle: Climate and Culture Change. First Nation Americans: Artifact, Ritual and Conception of the Contemporary (upcoming)
Taiwan Multimedia Arts and Contemporaneity in Culture, Taipei (2023)
US Department of State Zero1 Artist Incubator (upcoming)
Japanese Contemporary art - Modern Nomadism and Relocated Communities in Japan (2022)
Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award Research (2021)
New Russia: Exploring St Petersburg through image, sound and memory. CEC-ArtsLink (2017)
China: Urban Ritual, Artmaking and Exploration in the Modern Metropolis (Fulbright-Hays Awardee, Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing, 2017)
Mongolia: Contemporary and Nomadic - Khoomei throat singing and contemporary music (Zanabazar Museum of Fine Art, 2014)
Mongolia: Performance and Nomadic Tsaatan Reindeer Herders near Siberia: Exploring music, ritual and landscape (2014).
Habitat (Mongolia): Nomadic Families in Khovsgol Province (video, 2014)
Sao Paulo, Brazil: Ritual and The Performer as Observer of the City (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, 2013)
Sao Paulo, Brazil: Performing the City (Hemispheric Institute, 2013)
Sao Paulo, Brazil: Exploring Neighborhoods and their Found Objects (Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, Brazilian Ministry of Culture, 2012)
Seoul: Exploring Neighborhoods and their Found Objects (Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture, Korea, 2012)
Germany: Perforated City/ Disappearing City - Cities in Sachsen Anhalt, Germany, funding from Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, 2008)
Norway: Shapeshifters and Time Travelers: Sunnfjord and its Legends of Nordic Mysticism (funding from Nordisckkunstnarsenter Dalsasen, NKD, Norway 2008).
2014 Expedition to the Mongolian Restricted Border Region with Siberia.
